French grammar - It is, that is, they are - c'est and ce sont

The word ce means 'that' or 'it'. It can refer to anything - animals, objects or concepts. And can be both singular and plural.

-- In short, ce is a very general, very useful and very common word in French. There is no exact English equivalent.

Combined with the verb être ('to be') we have the very common phrase c'est - 'it is' or 'that is'.

• The est is the il or elle conjugation of the verb être ('to be').

• And we have the contraction ce+est ⇒ c'est.

-- In French, when we have a word ending in a vowel and another starting with a vowel side-by-side, to avoid having two vowel sounds together, we often drop the first vowel and replace it with an apostrophe and join the words together. So ce+est ⇒ c'est.

The plural form of c'est is ce sont ('these are' or those are') which uses the ils or elles conjugation of être.

-- However, you will commonly hear people say c'est even in situations where the plural ce sont should be used.

The inverted question form of c'est is est-ce ?.

-- And while the plural question form sont-ce ? is grammatically correct, it is never used.